Summary

The "Face on Mars" was found during a search for a possible landing site for the sister ship of Viking 1,

Pictures were taken during the search, a showy likeness of a human face was spotted.

An enourmous head close to two miles from end to end, was looking back at the camera.

Scientists believed it was just another Martian mesa, common around a region of Mars called Cydonia. But it had unusual shadows that made it look similar to an Egypt Pharaoh.

The "Face on Mars" is a huge rock formation, which resembles a human head.

Shadows gave the illusion of eyes, a nose, and a mouth, and because of this, it caused alot of attention to Mars. People believe that it was an alien monument, but proof showed that it was, just a natural landform.

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Argumentative Essay

Few Scientists believe the Face was an alien artifact.

Photographing Cydonia and the Face became a priorty for NASA.

Eighteen years after the Viking missions ended, Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) arrived at the Red Planet in September, 1997.

On April 5, 1998 Mars Global Surveyor flew over Cydonia for the first time, Michael Malin, and his Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) team took a photo ten times sharper than the original Viking Photos in 1976.

Thousands of web surfers were waiting when the image first appeared on a JPL web site. To no surprise at all, revealed . . . a natural landform. No alien monument after all, Just rocks.

When the photo was taken it was winter in April '98. A cloudy time of year on the Red Planet. The camera on board MGS had to look through wispy clouds to see the Face, skeptics believe that because of this the alien markings were hidden. As said in the article

"Malin's team captured an extraordinary photo using the camera's absolute maxium resolution."

The pixels in the 2001 image spans to 1.56 meters.

While the best 1976 Viking photo had 43 meters per pixel.

In a digital image 3 times bigger than the pixel size, if there were objects on the ground in this picture, you could see what they were just by looking at it.

The picture shows the Martian equivalent of a butte or mesa, commonly found around the American West.

"It reminds me of Middle Butte in the Snake River Plain of Idaho," says Garvin "That's a lava dome that takes the form of an isolated mesa about the same height as the Face on Mars." 